Life Outside the Cubicle: Dancing in the Barkhor

There are some places you don't expect to make fans. When you have a fan you are generally surprised, flattered and you move on. I made a fan that made me feel, in addition to surprised and flattered, ridiculous at the Potala Palace. The Chinese couple (whom I call Sunny and Chilly) and I were enjoying the wonders of the palace and sneaking pictures when a man from a tour group just walked up to me with a huge grin. I had no clue what he was saying in Chinese but he kept repeating "hello", so I smiled. Then, said man lagged behind his tour group and consistently waited for us to catch up with him. By the fifth time that this happened he presented me with his business card and made Sunny translate for him. Uhm, turns out that I am the most beautiful foreign woman he has ever seen. He should really travel some more. This is the surprised and flattered part. Now, on to the ridiculous portion.

Walking into the Potala you must climb a million stairs to reach the ticket office. Walking out of the Potala you walk down a sloped walkway that delivers the visitor to a gauntlet of shops and Tibetans selling jewellery. It also delivered me into the viewfinder of my fan who then took to following me with his camera for a good five minutes. The man would hide behind cars just to get a shot of me and then run in front of us and turn around and shoot off several frames. People kept staring. Sunny and Chilly thought it was the funniest thing in the world. It was like being followed by a member of the papparazzi with a 100 frame roll of film at his disposal. Eventually we just had to make a run for it.

After our goodbye dinner with Sunny and Chilly, Jens and I went for a midnight stroll around the Jorkhand Temple in the Barkhor. Walking through the abandoned souvenir stalls during our kora we encountered a group of singing Tibetans in front of the temple. Naturally we walked up to them and joined them for some traditional singing, dancing and loads of homemade chang, a fermented barley beer. Many, many shots and songs later we walked back to the hostel.